I have posted before about the ongoing legal battle being waged by Gavin Grimm, a transgender high school student against the backward and bigoted Gloucester County, Virginia school division. By way of full disclosure, I know Grimm and he and his mother have been to our home and, in my view, this kid is amazing and justice is on his side. I would further note that while I frequently complain about Norfolk and Hampton, they are centers of the liberal universe compared to Gloucester County which wants time to be permanently trapped in the 1950's. As Huffington Post reports, the Obama administration through the Justice Department and U.S. Department of Education have joined the lawsuit on the side of Grimm. Gloucester County is playing with fire since it ultimately could lose its federal funding for failure to comply with the Civil Rights Act, something I would personally love to see happen so as to send a strong message to other backward, homophobic school districts. The irony is that, the school district had initially treated Grimm properly until some "concerned citizen" - I suspect some anti-gay pastor - started making complaints. Sadly, the school board gave deference to religious based bigotry rather than Grimm's civil rights. Here are story highlights:

Schools can't prevent transgender students from using the restrooms
that correspond with their gender identities without violating federal
law, the Obama administration says.

The U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Justice made
that argument in a friend-of-the-court brief submitted late Wednesday in
support of a Virginia teenager who is suing for access to the boys'
restrooms at his high school.

The government's filing says a Gloucester County School Board policy
that requires 16-year-old junior Gavin Grimm to use either the girls'
restrooms or a unisex bathroom constitutes unlawful bias under Title IX,
the 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

The policy denies Grimm "a benefit that every other student at this
school enjoys: access to restrooms that are consistent with his or her
gender identity," lawyers for the two departments wrote. "Treating a
student differently from other students because his birth-assigned sex
diverges from his gender identity constitutes differential treatment on
the basis of sex under Title IX."

The administration's position in Grimm's case represents its
clearest statement to date on a modern civil rights issue that has
roiled some communities as more children identify as transgender at
younger ages.

The brief "sends a crucial message to schools across the country —
transgender youth are valuable members of our community who are entitled
to full protection of the law," Human Rights Campaign President Chad
Griffin said. "No one should be humiliated or marginalized by the adults
responsible for helping them to achieve."

Gloucester County Attorney Ted Wilmot was not available for comment
on Thursday, his office said. After the Justice Department indicated in
July that it wanted to weigh in on Grimm's lawsuit, Wilmot told the
Daily Press newspaper in Newport News, Virginia that existing court
precedents do not support the idea that the school board's restroom
rules violate Title IX.

The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights already has
reached agreements with two southern California school districts, one in
2013 and one last year, to settle complaints of harassment and unequal
treatment brought by transgender students.

In a pair of memos issued last year, one on the responsibility of
schools to respond to reports of sexual violence and the other on access
to single-sex classes, the office also articulated its view that Title
IX entitles transgender students to be treated in accordance with their
expressed gender.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued to overturn the policy on his
behalf in June. A federal judge sided with the school board last month,
dismissing the sex discrimination claim the ACLU had advanced and that
the Obama administration had embraced.

The case is now pending before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Religious belief has no place in the civil laws and elected officials and judges who cannot put aside their own beliefs need to resign from office. It is really that simple. No more undeserved deference to religion and religious belief.

There is the saying that insanity is evidenced by doing the same action over and over again and expecting a different result than what has occurred innumerable times before. Under this definition, the tax plans being offered by the Republican presidential candidates are nothing short of insane. These lunatics ignore the fact that since 1980 forward massive tax cuts for the wealthy and big business have failed to generate the economic growth promised by GOP charlatans and carnival barkers. Instead, what we have seen is a massive transfer of wealth to the top 1% and stagnation or decline in wages and wealth for everyone else. Moreover, to make their fantasy based plans work, massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare would be needed, thus sending more average Americans into destitution in their supposed golden years. The New York Times lets loose on the GOP in a main page editorial today. Here are highlights:

The Republican presidential candidates were full of tax talk at this week’s debate. But none has a tax plan coherent enough to be the basis of a substantive discussion, let alone one that could meet the nation’s challenges.
Take, for example, the issue of how much revenue any plan would raise or lose.

All of the Republican plans focus on tax cuts, so losses are all but inevitable. Quick-and-dirty calculations of proposals from Jeb Bush, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz show red ink running into the trillions of dollars.

Yet the candidates assert, against historical evidence, that revenue
losses from tax cuts will be offset by economic growth. Ted Cruz invoked
the Reagan-era tax cuts as a model for success for his 10 percent
flat-tax proposal. In fact, President Reagan raised taxes to close the
budget deficit that opened up after he cut them in 1981. Ben Carson
offered his muddled proposal for a tax equal to 15 percent of gross
domestic product, saying it would be appealing to everyone once he “put
all the facts down.”

The tax proposals from Jeb Bush, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, while not
as fantastical as those of Mr. Cruz and Mr. Carson, all make big and
broad cuts, mostly to benefit the wealthiest Americans, including an end
to the estate tax, cuts in tax rates and enhanced tax breaks for
investments. The only way the Republican candidates could ever pay for
such large tax cuts would be by slashing big spending programs, namely,
Medicare and Social Security.

All of these candidates deny fiscal reality. In the next 10 years,
revenues will need to increase by 40 percent simply to keep federal
spending even, per capita, with inflation and population growth.
Additional revenues will be needed to pay for health care for the
elderly, transportation systems and other obligations, as well as for
newer challenges, including climate change. And interest on the national
debt will surely rise because interest rates have nowhere to go but up.

In
light of these needs, taxes have to go up. The reality is that income
tax increases can be prudently imposed only on the wealthy at this
point, because only they have had meaningful income gains in recent
decades.

The
Democratic candidates have acknowledged this and have called for
high-end tax increases, while keeping proposed tax cuts targeted on low-
or middle-income Americans. They have also called for new taxes on
financial transactions. Most important, their tax plans are part of
broader economic proposals to raise wages, including support for a
higher minimum wage, unions, expanded profit-sharing and employee
ownership.

Responsible
policy for the near term demands tax increases on individuals and
sectors that can bear them. There is no room or rationale for
across-the-board tax cuts, no matter what the Republican candidates say.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

I have not blogged in days - the longest break ever since I started blogging daily in 2007 - largely because we have been so busy with friends and I have had to do legal work everyday except one. We are at sea today and will arrive back in Norfolk tomorrow morning. The trip has been a lot of fun and my impression of Bermuda has been positive even though it needs to catch up on LGBT rights and same sex marriage. The island is far more tropical than I expected. The most memorable parts of the trip were dinner at the Fourways Inn on Monday and lunch at The Reefs on Tuesday. Friends on the cruise are the former owners of The Reefs and the Fourways Inn is one of their long time favorite restaurant. On Monday night, the husband and I and a young married gay couple enjoyed the partying and dancing at Club Aqua near the cruise terminal at the Navy Wharf.

The original portion of the Fourways Inn was built in 1727 of native coral stone and cedar by John Harvey of Harvey's Bristol Cream fame, who made it his home. The name came from the fact that the residence spread in all four
directions and was enclosed within two and a half acres of walled garden. The property now also includes 10 guest suites.

The Reefs is built strung along a cliff on the southeast side of Bermuda with a beautiful private beach. The current owner used to work for our friends when they owned the place. We had an amazing lunch on the terrace with a special menu and spectacular views. The photos below are of the view we enjoyed.

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About Me

Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

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